


Algor Mortis

by heartstone



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Mild Gore, Tragic Romance, early second age
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-24 03:31:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21092678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartstone/pseuds/heartstone
Summary: “If He is merciful. . . will you be too?”***Mairon sees an illusion.





	Algor Mortis

Mairon was laying on a bed of cold ashes when he saw Him: a small, wraith-like shadow against the grey particles borne into the air. He knew it was an illusion, but reached out to Him anyways.

He whimpered, bones groaning in their sockets as he moved for the first time in weeks from his spot, couched in a hillock of ashes. His fingers trembled feebly as they stretched out to Melkor from where He sat on a grey and chipped rock. He was facing away and His hair dripped from His shoulders like bitumen, staining the ground about Him black. Mairon’s fingers strained in the air: he could not reach far enough.

“I always wanted that freedom,” came His voice. It was low and raspy, and the resonance of it made the drifting dust quiver in its lazy course through the cold, still air. Mairon’s hand fell to the ground, and a fractal of salt clung to the corner of his eye. To see Him was crippling and to hear Him banished any thought of movement, for he was too afraid to disturb the illusion.

“It is all I ever desired: freedom from the circles of the world. From the Theme.”

Melkor sighed, and it seemed to take ages for that breath to pass from His lips before He could continue.

“Yet, He did not give that Gift to me.”

Melkor turned, slowly, laboriously. Mairon wept into the ashes but no sound left the Maia’s lips, and the tears he shed were crystalline and made pale salt-scabs on his cheeks.

Melkor looked as He had when Mairon had last saw Him, before the Host of the West had torn them asunder, but with some of the wounds He had sustained after. Emaciated, His limbs were swollen at the joints, and each breath He took pulled thin white flesh between His bruised ribs, discolored into brilliant purple and sickly wan. His hands lay limp in His lap, and they crumbled into black flakes to tease the ivory of phalanges beneath. His scars bled tar like the hair that still curtained His face, and minute shapes writhed from within the gaping trench of flesh.

“I envied them,” Melkor whispered, “So I made them fear that Gift. But that did nothing to stop the desire within me to have it for myself.”

He turned then, completely. His face was just as Mairon recalled, and he struggled to stop weeping to that his painful tears did not encrust his lids and blind him. He would see every horrible shape and every terrible detail, just to see Him: the three jagged rents across His bloodless cheeks, the dark, peeling lapis of His parched lips, and the twisting veins that came from them. Nor would he look away from His eyes, cataracts that saw nothing, a pale ring of icy blue around a pupil that had collapsed to mush.

“I am so close,” He said, worn, His voice fading even as He spoke, “And now, I am afraid too. Will He be merciful? Will He ever show me mercy? When will He let me go? When. . .”

Melkor slipped off the rock, falling to His knees, for His feet had been hewn. He looked down at Mairon, still weeping into the grey ash that had built up around him from the decay of his Fëa.

“If He is merciful. . . will you be too?”

Mairon reached out, and touched the hand that He held limp at His side. It crunched like the husk of a cicada molt when he touched it, and Melkor smiled sadly at him as His hand disintegrated into ash. Mairon could not speak, choked with the dust, and he watched as the small, wraith-like shadow faded to grey.

Melkor was gone, and only then could he answer.

The ashes remained silent, but below, to the very root of the mountain, Mairon was heard. For the first time in centuries, the earth stirred: somewhere, in a tomb of cold stone, a flicker of warmth was resurrected.

**Author's Note:**

> The mountain is, of course, Mount Doom. I imagine Mairon spent some time just laying there in Mordor before he began building. I have a headcanon that Mordor was intended to be a fortress for Mairon that was scrapped in favor of Angband, which had a strategic position. I mean. . . it has Melkor-vibes all over it, with the mountains blocking the West and a volcano in the middle. Mairon going back there in the Second Age would be reminded of Him, and he could awaken the dormant volcano.  
The Gift is the Gift of Men that Melkor wants Eru to give to Him. In the preface of the Silmarillion, Tolkien writes: "The Doom (or the Gift) of Men is mortality, freedom from the circles of the world." Melkor, wounded and insane at the end of the First Age was afraid His body would be hurt, yet His desire for destruction extended even to Himself. Perhaps He would think it a mercy if Eru had allowed the Void to kill Him for good, free from creation and the Theme.  
But we know that Mairon can't let Him go.  
Algor mortis means "the coldness of death" and is the stage of decomposition when a recently deceased body cools to ambient temperature.  
***


End file.
